What The Bible Says About Sex

When it comes to sex and your faith, I know that you want to get it right.

Our sexuality is tightly woven into who we are — it’s one part who our soul connects with and one part what our body feels.

And for modern Christians, our sexuality is also a battleground. There are so many people telling us what we should believe and how we should act.

It can be difficult to keep your head on straight when you’re trying to balance what you heard at church once, what you think you’re supposed to think, what your heart desires, what your body craves, what your friends tell you, what you see in movies, and on and on and on …

So let’s cut through all the noise, right? Let’s go straight to the source… let’s take a look at what the Bible says! That will tell us what to think and how to act, right? (Spoiler alert: it won’t)

Here are some things that “the Bible says about sex”

Some men should castrate themselves for the sake of God’s Kingdom 

For there are eunuchs, that were so born from their mother’s womb: and there are eunuchs, that were made eunuchs by men: and there are eunuchs, that made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven’s sake.

– Matthew 19:12

A woman should marry her rapist, and her rapist should pay her father

If a man meets a virgin who is not engaged, and seizes her and lies with her, and they are caught in the act, the man who lay with her shall give fifty shekels of silver to the young woman’s father, and she shall become his wife

– Deuteronomy 22:28-29

Everyone should be celibate for their whole life 

 I’m telling those who are single and widows that it’s good for them to stay single like me.

– 1 Corinthians 7:8

Everyone should get married

Marriage should be honored by all

– Hebrews 13:4

Premarital sex is delightful and men and women can delight in the pleasures of sex

– All of Song of Solomon

It’s normal for men to have more than one wife, and not condemned by God

– Esau

– Moses

– Solomon

It’s normal for men to have lovers in addition to their wives, and not condemned by God

– Abraham

– David

The Bible says all sorts of things about sex. Some of them are beautiful. Some of them are revolting.

We have to understand what the Bible is and its place in our faith life.

The Bible is a central pillar of the Christian faith and it was written by flawed humans trying to make sense of their place in the world and their relationship with each other and the divine. We are called to learn from it and wrestle with it but it’s not a step-by-step instruction manual. We have to take responsibility for our faith.

So what should Christians believe about sex?

If we want to be faithful to God, we are called to wrestle with the big issues in life. That’s pretty much the entirety of Scripture: God’s people wrestling with themselves, each other, and with God over who we are, how we act, why we’re here, and how to relate to God.

Scripture gives us a look at the heart of God, as does the life of Jesus, and so too do Christians throughout the ages. But what we don’t have is a step-by-step sexual instruction manual.

Now what? Here’s what I want you to do:

Set aside some time—even just 7 minutes—to really think about your values. These might come from the Bible, but remember that the Bible doesn’t have one clear message on sex so you’ll have to do some digging and discerning yourself. Your values will likely also come from inside of you: how you’ve experienced and observed the world and your reaction to that, what you’ve picked up from your family that still rings true, and what you appreciate in those around you.

Think about big picture values first (things like compassion, respect, trust) and then get into some that might be more sex-specific (clear communication, respect, pleasure).

You don’t need to do anything with these values—yet!—the first step is just to identify them.

If you’d like to share them with us, we’d love to hear them. You can use this form.

We need to talk about sex & Christianity

When I was in seventh grade, our church youth group leader led a three week series on sex and love which concluded with him passing out “pledges” for us to sign promising to wait until we were married to have sex. They ran out before I got one so I never actually signed it.

To my young mind, “wait until you’re married to a woman” seemed like simple, easy guidance. (I didn’t, at the time, realize just how unrealistic it is: 90% of Americans have sex before marriage—even when looking at older generations or evangelical Christians.)

When I began to realize that I was attracted to guys, I had to figure out what to do with that. What is the faithful expression of these feelings and desires? Where could they lead? What is forbidden?

Regardless of your sexual orientation or gender identity, at some point we all must ask of ourselves: when, if ever, do I want to have sex?

We receive complicated messages: in society, men are told to have lots of sexual conquests, while women are supposed to remain pure (but not too withholding, otherwise they’re frigid, it’s a lose-lose predicament). Queer people are told there is something sick, sinful, perverted about our sexual desires (and gay/bi men are told there’s something dangerous about theirs). While asexual people are told there’s something broken with them for not experiencing sexual attraction at all.

Some types of Christianity act as if “the answer” is clear, simple, and easy: do not have sex until you’re heterosexually married.

But it’s not that clear, simple, or easy.

If you believe — like we do at Queer Theology — that being LGBTQ is not only “ok” but an important part of the diversity of God’s creation … then one question that comes up is “what about sex?” It’s a question we are asked over and over and over again by email, on Twitter and Tumblr, and inside Sanctuary Collective.

Some LGBTQ Christians take the entire worldview that they learned from anti-queer Christianity and just tweak it ever so slightly, deciding gay sex is ok as long as you are gay married. Is that what we should do?

Over the past 15 years, Fr. Shay and I have each wrestled with big questions about faithful sex and sexuality. We’ve read, studied, and prayed. We’ve talked with hundreds of Christians around the world about sex and sexuality. We’ve engaged in everything from celibacy to ethical sluttery. We’ve definitely messed up: hurting ourselves and others along the way. But we’ve learned so so much and we are excited to share all that with you.

This month at Queer Theology, we’re taking an unashamed look at sex and sexuality: If and when it’s ok to have sex, how to build a sexual ethic for yourself, healing from purity culture and navigating respectability politics. We’ll share how the spirit of God has moved in our lives, what has been healthy and helpful (and what hasn’t), and offer practical advice for how you can live into a healthy, life-giving, faithful sexuality. Make sure you get it all by joining our mailing list (box below).

If you have specific questions or topics that you’d like us to cover, leave them in the comments or email connect@queertheology.com.

Photo copyright Matt Kulisch Photography. All rights reserved. Used with permission.

When And How To Have Sex

Celibacy The First Time.

I was taught one thing about sex: don’t have it until you’re married. That’s it. That was the entirety of my sexual education. I wasn’t taught about intimacy or consent or safer sex. I wasn’t even taught about the mechanics of it. It was assumed that since sex was natural once you got married you’d just figure it out. In fact, that was pretty much promised: if you waited until you got married to have sex you would have a wonderful and fulfilling sex life. 

But only if you were heterosexual.

Ah yes. Queer and transgender people weren’t supposed to exist. And when they did exist they were supposed to either cease existing or, barring that, remain celibate forever.

I grew up with all of these messages that basically said sex was either super dirty and wrong or a holy mystical union between a man and his wife. And I felt on the outside of both conversations.

As I was coming to terms with the fact that I wasn’t straight (I had no language for gender identity at this point) I wasn’t all that interested in sex. Probably because I didn’t know anything about it. What I was interested in was intimacy. I wanted to be close to another person. I wanted to hold and be held. I wanted to kiss someone. I wanted to not feel so damn alone. I was also determined to still be a good evangelical Christian. I promised myself (and anyone who would listen) that I was going to be celibate forever. I thought that was the only way to honor God.

The truth? It was the only way to make my conservative Christian church (and family) happy. 

I held firm in my commitment to celibacy…until I fell in love. Those who ask us to remain celibate forever ask us to deny ourselves of companionship and closeness. I do believe there are people who are called to celibacy (either for a certain time or for a lifetime) but it is not all queer people; that belief is toxic and needs to go.

No Sex Until Marriage.

I didn’t mean to fall in love it just did. I wrestled with my faith again and decided that I would simply wait to have sex until I was married. Sure, the church wouldn’t recognize my marriage, but so what. I would still be honoring what I thought was right.

Now here’s where it gets really complicated. I was with someone I was really attracted to. I wanted to have sex. But I didn’t think I could have sex until I was married. So we rushed into marriage. From the time we met to the time we got married it was only about a year.

Looking back I cringe because we were clearly not ready to get married. Neither of us were financially secure. We still were getting to know one another. There were all sorts of red flags that I ignored and so much of it is because of sex.

We were attracted to one another, definitely. But ready for a lifetime commitment? No.

We waited until we got engaged and then we had sex. And it was okay. Not great. It wasn’t the life changing thing I had been promised. Now, some people will say that’s because we were queer. Or not married yet.

I think it’s because no one had told me a damn thing about how to have sex.

Look, sex is natural. And it’s also a skill that needs to be learned. You need to know your body. You need to learn your partner’s body. You need to learn how to communicate in the heat of the moment. That doesn’t happen overnight. It doesn’t happen instantly even if you’ve had sex a million times before or if this is your first time. There are new things to learn.

And now that we were having sex I also felt like we couldn’t break up. I had given my virginity away! No one else would ever want me! We had to stay together forever! Sounds bonkers, right? Except that’s what the evangelical church tells people. If you have sex you are basically ruined. So don’t have it. And if you do…well….

So now I’m married and sex is still complicated and crowded with guilt. I can’t talk to anyone about it because my Christian friends still think I am living in sin and my queer friends don’t really understand my hang ups. Plus, I’ve never talked about sex so I don’t really know how to do it. It makes me uncomfortable, as if I am talking about something dirty or wrong. 

I don’t feel dirty or wrong when I’m having sex. I don’t feel like I am doing anything wrong. But still these weird feelings about what one can and cannot talk about linger. And so I don’t have anyone to talk to to see if what I am experiencing is normal or good. I don’t have anyone to learn from. It just feels complicated and hard. 

And honestly? I feel a little cheated. I was promised that if I waited sex would be mind blowing all the time and every time from the jump. And it’s not. So what, exactly had I been waiting for? 

Then I start to wonder if I had really been ready to get married. If sex had been off the table would we still have chosen to get married? Maybe if we had just had sex we would have dated longer or moved in together first and waited to see if we were actually compatible.

And then I transitioned to male. Now we add gender into an already swirling mix of life and sex and religion and the center could not hold. We tried. We went to counseling. I tried to be less of who I was, but even that was too much for her. She told me she was no longer attracted to me as I laid shirtless in our bed, bearing the scars of my relatively recent chest surgery. My first thought? Shame about my body. I asked her to hand me a shirt. I covered myself up.

We went our separate ways and it felt like every doomsday prophecy ever spoken over my life had come to pass. Queer people couldn’t find lasting relationships. Transgender people had weird bodies that no one would ever really love. And once again I had no one to talk to.

I dipped a toe into the online dating world. I even went on one date. The whole thing just felt exhausting. I either had to not put that I was transgender in my profile and then worry about coming out or rejection or I could put it in my profile and spend all of my time explaining what being transgender meant. Through it all the voices of my ex rang in my head, “I’m not attracted to you anymore.” That voice danced with my own insecurities about my body; about who would want a body like mine.

Celibacy Revisited.

After spending way too much time scrolling through OK Cupid, feeling distracted as I thought about dating, and still feeling weary over the break up of my marriage, I decided that I would be celibate again. This time it was different, though. I wasn’t choosing celibacy because I thought sex was wrong or because I thought it was required of me, I was choosing it because I wanted to focus on other things. By taking dating off of the table I was able to invest in my writing, starting QueerTheology.com, working toward ordination, and a host of other things. 

I chose celibacy for reasons that had very little to do with sex, but instead had to do with where I wanted to invest my energy. The years I spent celibate mostly healed me from the break up of my marriage. I was able to get really clear on who I was and what I wanted. I was able to figure out what the truth was about my personality. What things were actual flaws and what were damaging messages that were untrue? I finally had time to figure out my identity, to figure out what I wanted out of my life, to figure out what I liked and didn’t like. I was amazed to find how disconnected I had become from my own self. Celibacy gave me the time and space to reconnect.

Celibacy also taught me a lot about other people and my relationships with them. It taught me how to love people freely without expecting anything from them. I was able to enter into relationships without the awkwardness of trying to figure out what the other person was thinking about me. With dating and sex off the table I was simply able to get to know people, to invest in their lives, to come to the table freely and without striving.

I was able to be more generous with my time. I could show up for people at any hour of the day, do the late night airport run, stay up until three in the morning talking. I could field the middle of the night phone call.

I learned to not be anxious about being single. Even when I was the only single person in the room. Since I had chosen celibacy I could happily be the third or fifth wheel. It didn’t feel weird for me to go out to dinner or the movies with couples. I didn’t feel like something was missing from my life. I didn’t feel less than. I simply felt like me. My friends were simply my friends. I felt healthy and whole.

Some people didn’t understand my choice. They thought it was weird or I was doing it because I was afraid. They thought it was unnatural. They seemed to think that I was making the decision lightly or foolishly.

I always told people that I wasn’t closing myself off from a relationship forever. This wasn’t a vow that I had taken, nothing was required of me. But I didn’t like the person I became when I was desperate to be in a relationship. I didn’t like how online dating distracted me and took up my emotional bandwith. So I told people that I would consider dating again, but the person would have to pretty much fall into my lap. I wasn’t going to go looking. I said that, but honestly it was more for other people’s benefit than it was for my own. They needed to hear that I wasn’t closing myself off. And I wasn’t, but I didn’t think that anyone would come along. I was content. I was happy. I was settled.

Enter Actress. Stage Right.

A couple of years ago I started a theatre company called Uprising. We do plays that raise ethical questions and then partner with local organizations already working on those issues to channel the energy and empathy created by theatre into concrete change. It was the next step in my journey to figure out where to best use my gifts. I had always loved theatre and I was passionate about justice work. What would happen if we could combine the two? No one else was doing it and so we began. 

For our very first show I needed a woman who could play an incredibly difficult part. It was one of the hardest roles in the show and I knew I needed someone great. A woman came in to audition and she was fantastic. I cast her in the part. We were playing boyfriend and girlfriend, but we were strangers to one another. Throughout the rehearsal period we became friends and got to know one another. I came to appreciate the instincts she brought to the production. She knew her stuff. We went out for dinner and drinks with the rest of the cast, shared laughs at rehearsal, and that was about it.

It wasn’t until very late in the process, almost opening, that I realized I had a bit of a crush on her. Now, this wasn’t the first time I had had a crush in my years of celibacy. I had had crushes before. And what I had learned is that if you don’t give the crush energy, it goes away. I figured there was no way that the crush was reciprocal, so all I had to do was get through the production and then we would go our separate ways and my crush would fade and all would be well. I also didn’t want to mess anything up with her because she is very talented and I hoped she would work with the theatre company again.

After the show opened we had several days off before the next weekend’s performances. It was the first time in ages that we had had time off. It felt weird. She invited me to come over to her place and watch a movie. I wondered if maybe this crush was reciprocal. And if so, what then?

At this point I still didn’t know if she knew that I was transgender. I hadn’t talked about it during the run of the show because it didn’t come up. But I also knew that if this crush was going somewhere she needed to know. We watched the movie and then talked. Sometime during the evening I blurted out, “you know I’m transgender right?” She nodded yes and I went on with my story. I breathed a sigh of relief that now it was out. 

But I still didn’t know how she felt. And we still had another weekend of shows. On closing night I gave her a note that I hoped was vague enough to not freak her out but clear enough to show that a door was open for me to exploring where this could go. 

We started hanging out. She asked if she could kiss me. We started seeing each other, though neither of us were quite ready to call it dating. But we liked being with one another. We were attracted to each other. We liked kissing each other.

And then suddenly I was back in the throes of evangelical angst around sex. 

Where the hell did that come from?

I hadn’t been in the evangelical church for over 12 years at this point. I no longer believed that sex is only between a man and a woman in marriage. I no longer believed that pre-marital sex was wrong. But here I was feeling anxious about sex. When was too soon? Did we need to be officially in a relationship? Did we need to be able to call each other boyfriend and girlfriend? Should we say “I love you” first? How did I know what was right?

Then there were the other fears: What if she doesn’t like my body? What if she’s freaked out by the fact that I’m transgender? What if she doesn’t know to be freaked out, but then she’ll be freaked out when we’re undressing and then I’ll get super hurt and everything will suck?

And how much of anxiety over when to have sex was actually related to my anxiety that she would reject me?

Could this be any more complicated?

I kept thinking back to my marriage, to the situation that got me into my marriage. The fact that having this timeline in my head of how things were “supposed to be” made me rush things I wasn’t ready for. I didn’t want to make that mistake again. I also didn’t want to be casual or careless with sex.

Finally, though, I had someone to talk to. Brian and I were able to talk a lot about sex and what it means to be both of us. He was able to challenge some of the assumptions I was making and ask if there wasn’t really something else going on. I was able to finally sort through and figure out what mattered for me when it came to sex. 

I was able to figure out my own sexual ethic.

Finally I was freed from everything being a zero sum game. I was freed from making decisions about my sexual life based on what other people thought I should do or told me I should do. I was able to extricate my sexuality from my evangelical moralistic upbringing. I was able to divorce myself from respectability politics that said I had to conform to certain standards in order to be an acceptable Christian. (Even though, often, even being an acceptable Christian isn’t enough when you’re queer).

Here’s what I’ve learned:

It’s totally possible to take sex seriously, to believe that sex matters and means something, while also not wrapping a million moral clauses around it.

It’s possible for different people to have different views about sex and have them both be respectful and healthy and good. I don’t do casual sex. It doesn’t work for me. Other people do, it works for them. Neither of these views negate the validity of the other view.

We have to free ourselves from one size fits all sexuality. What works for one person doesn’t work for someone else. What one person needs someone else doesn’t need.

What matters is health, consent, communication, and respect. 

What matters is your intrinsic understanding of who you are and what you need.

How do we get there?

Unpacking years of harmful messages about sex and sexuality takes time. It doesn’t happen overnight. It doesn’t even happen after you’ve had a first amazing sexual experience with another person; guilt and shame can still rear their ugly heads and make you feel like you’ve done something wrong (even though you haven’t).

How do you create a sexual ethic if you’ve never been taught? If you’ve not been allowed to even entertain the thought that you were allowed?

Here’s some of what has helped me:

Get clear on what sex means to you. Not what you think it should mean, not what other people have told you it means, what does it actually mean to you?

Separate out other people’s voices from your voice. Which voices are the church? Which voices are your parents? Which ones are your friends? Which ones are media? Which ones are you? This can take quite a while, so be patient with yourself.

If the condemnation of the church or your parents were off the table, what would you do? What decisions would you make?

Are the decisions you are making to please anyone but you and your partner? Are you choosing celibacy because you feel like you have to? Because you feel like it’s what God or your church demands? Are you choosing to wait until marriage because otherwise you won’t get to be a part of your church community? Are you not having sex because you think it’s sinful? Really examine these beliefs. I firmly believe that you can choose to wait until marriage to have sex and have that be the right decision for you. I also believe you can choose celibacy out of healthy and well grounded reasons. But most of the people I see making these choices are making them because they feel like they have to. Maybe they sugarcoat it with conversations about how it works for them or they agree with their church teachings, but the reality is that choice is rooted in the belief that queer sex is inherently wrong and sinful. That belief is toxic and must be rooted out and tossed in the fire.

If you enter into (or withhold yourself from) a sexual relationship believing that queer sex (or any sex at all outside of marriage) is sinful and shameful this belief will mess you up. It will. It will impact your whole life negatively.

If you continue to struggle with guilt and shame around sex, I urge you to seek out a licensed therapist. By this I mean a therapist that actually has a degree and a license and isn’t just a “church counselor.” Also make sure that therapist is knowledgable about queer sexuality and identity. You do not need to be educating your therapist nor do you need to convince your therapist that queer sexuality is acceptable. If you really need to see a Christian therapist make sure they have an actual degree and license and are fully accepting of LGBTQ identity. If you seek out an unaffirming therapist they will damage you.

Finally, what do you want to do? For those of us raised in the evangelical church this seems like a scandalous question. We were taught that it doesn’t matter what we want, it matters what God wants! But really that’s just a shield. God gave us minds to think for ourselves. God gave us intuition and instincts. God gave us our bodies. God gave us free will and the ability to discern. The church is afraid that if we really listen to ourselves that we’ll tune in to the truth: our desires matter. Our instincts matter. We don’t need an outside authority telling us what is right for us; we have all that we need in our hearts and souls and minds. 

So sit with your body. Sit with your heart. Ask yourself, “What do I want?” Your body will tell you. Your spirit will tell you. You just need to listen.

Sexuality doesn’t have to be complicated. It can be a source of joy, of pleasure, of connection, of fun. But we have to do the work to unpack those harmful messages we received. We have to do the work of communication and consent. We have to do the work of listening to ourselves and learning what we need.

I promise, it’s worth it.

Creating A Sexual Ethic After Coming Out

“But if we accept homosexuality, what then? It will be anything goes.”

The Bible (as interpreted by a certain type of Christian) was the only guidebook for life she’d ever been given — “Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth”

If “the Bible” was “wrong” about “homosexuality,” then what? How would we live? What will guide us?

My response left her speechless: “I mean, I have a sexual ethic too.”

She had literally never considered that a gay person might have a sexual ethic.

I can’t tell you how many times some anti-queer person has said to me “We all struggle with temptations. Sometimes I want to steal or hurt people or cheat on my wife but I don’t because the Bible says it’s wrong” and each and every time I’m the one that is left speechless.

If the only reason you aren’t punching people in the face and breaking commitments you made to your spouse is because you’re worried God will punish you, then I’m not sure I want to be your friend.

The blessing—and the challenge—of being LGBTQ is that we get to create our own sexual ethics. The script we’ve been given—one man and one woman who wait until marriage to have sex and never get divorced—just doesn’t hold up anymore. In fact, I’m not sure it ever held up. What about the patriarchs of the Bible with many wives (and concubines and slaves)? What about Paul’s insistence on celibacy, with marriage as a last resort for those who weren’t strong enough to be celibate? What about the admonishment that rapists marry their victims?

I wish I could say that as soon as I came out I put together a healthy sexual ethic, but I didn’t.

At first, I tried to apply the same one my evangelical Christian faith had given me, with just the one minor adjustment of “it’s OK to be gay.”

Wait until you’re married to have sex (or at least until you’re in a really serious relationship)

• Don’t look at pornography
• Masturbation is sketchy at best and sinful at worst
• It’s bad to be sexually attracted to someone, that’s lust. You should only care about their heart.

When that became unsustainable, I would break but I didn’t have anything to fall back on. I’d have sex and even though he was nice and we cared about each other and had a safe, fun, consensual experience, I would come home and sit in my shower ashamed at myself for “giving in.”

This inability on my part to come up with a holistic sexual ethic put me in vulnerable situations:

• I often had sex late at night when I was worn down or tired or lonely. That wasn’t good for my mental health: it created an impression that sex was secretive and shameful.
• I often had sex when I was intoxicated. Would I have chosen that partner? Would I have engaged in all of those activities?
• I cut off otherwise healthy relationships if they got sexual “too soon” because I felt like that wasn’t what God wanted but then, later, I would have sex with people I knew less well.

It’s tough to look back at your life and say “I’m not sure I would have made those same decisions today.” I’m the type of person that wants to live in alignment with my values and desires. I want to be able to reclaim all of my experiences—even the less than ideal ones—and learn from them, to own them as part of my journey, to choose to not be a victim. At some point though, I looked back and said “I want to start making different choices.”

Here are some of the guidelines I’ve put together for myself:

• I want to have relationships founded on honesty, communication, consent, and trust
• Sex is good and natural. It can also be used maliciously or take up more space in my life than I’d like. I want to be in communication with my sex life.
• I want to see each sexual and romantic partner as a full person and I want to respect their agency and autonomy.
• I want to honor the commitments I’ve made to my partners.
• I want to have sex only while sober so I’m in the best position to make responsible choices for myself and my partners.
• I want to take steps to keep myself and my partners mentally, physically, and emotionally healthy

That’s where I’m at right now; ask me again next month or tomorrow and it might be different. The Bible says all sorts of messed up things about sex and relationships—most of those are products of their time and place and authors. Jesus does say to “love your neighbors” as yourself though; what it might it look like to make that a guiding principle in search of a sexual ethic?

Whether a relationship lasts a lifetime or only a few minutes, what might it mean to see the Christ in each person we encounter? For some people that will look like decades of monogamous togetherness, for others that might mean a kinky romp in a dungeon complete with paddles and consensual name-calling.

I come back often to the words of Paul,

When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things.

When I was a child, everything was black and white. The Bible had one consistent message and it was from God, the world had another message and it was from the devil. Sex before marriage was always wrong. Divorce was always wrong. Masturbation was probably wrong so let’s just not risk it, okay?

A world structured like that is easy to live in. Or, at least it seems easy to live in. Of course, we know through research that evangelical Christians have sex and affairs at the same or higher rates than their secular counterparts and that Christian youth who take “abstinence pledges” are more likely to have unsafe sex.

Still, it’s comforting to think that God has a perfect plan for my life written down for me somewhere.

Reality is messy though and life takes work. Our sex lives are no different. Fr. Shay has chosen to be celibate and I’m confidently sexually active before marriage. Those are two different ways of interacting with sexuality but what we have in common is that we (eventually) came to those positions from places of honesty, vulnerability, confidence, love, self-worth, and power. Most importantly, we both we feel free to make other choices if we determine that’s what we need.

It’s exciting, isn’t it, to be in charge of our own sexual ethic? A little scary, but exciting nonetheless… kinda like faith (and sex).

Photo by Matt Kulisch. Used with permission. All rights reserved.

What Purity Culture Does

Sex was pretty much a mystery to me, growing up as I did in a conservative, evangelical home. Pretty much all I knew about sex was that you shouldn’t do it until you were married. I don’t remember ever getting any sex education at school–I went to a private Christian school from first through sixth grade–or at home–I was homeschooled from 7th through 12th grade. What I do remember is that every year, around Valentine’s Day, they would have a youth group series on sex and dating. Which I always thought was ridiculous. For one thing I wasn’t all that interested in dating and so it seemed overkill, but for another once we heard their schtick once, we kind of got the gist! Don’t have sex. Which seemed fine to me because sex wasn’t something I was interested in.

There must have been a series in Sunday school that was a little more in-depth because I remember a car ride home after church and my mom asking me what I thought about Sunday school. She seemed to understand that I didn’t really know much about sex and that I might be embarrassed by that. I was embarassed not because I didn’t know stuff, but because we were talking about it at all!

I do remember that they had talked about oral sex in class and I thought that it meant talking dirty . My mom explained what it actually was and I was pretty grossed out by the concept. It didn’t make any sense to me why someone would want to do such a thing.

My body was a source of embarrassment to me and so I disconnected from it. I hid it behind baggy clothing and tried to pretend that it didn’t exist. I went deep into the life of my mind where I felt safe. I remember girls having conversations about boys and sex and I just had no interest. I wanted to talk about “serious” things, “important” things. Sex and boys just seemed bizarre to me. They existed in some other dimension, I guess. It wasn’t that I felt actively grossed out, I just never thought about it at all. I was so closed off from my body that sexual pleasure never really crossed my mind.

I got a purity ring for my 16th birthday. It was something I really wanted. The deal was that I would keep that ring until I got married and give it to my husband. If I broke that vow–violated my purity–I had to return the ring to my mother.

I lost the ring while I was on a summer mission trip which became the source of endless jokes about me “losing my purity….ring”.

Flash forward to me in my 20’s. By this point I have come out as gay, but still don’t have language for my gender identity. I am starting to leave my fundamentalism behind, but the attitudes that surround sex are the hardest for me to let go of. I look around at the stuff I see in the gay community (granted I don’t have access to very much) and it feels like everyone is interested in having lots of casual sex. I have never met a LGB couple in a long term relationship (that I know of).

Growing up I absorbed messages that all gay people were promiscuous and drank a lot and were incredibly unhappy. 

I had the unhappy part down. As I looked at my own life I was determined that I was going to be different from all of those other (mythical) gay people. I was going to be moral and wait until marriage to have sex. I felt like there was no reason why I couldn’t be a “good Christian” and still be gay. I wore that like a badge of honor feeling like it would make me more holy and righteous. And I could tell all of my conservative friends that that was my decision and maybe they would see that being gay wasn’t so terrible after all. Maybe they would continue to love me. Maybe my mother would still respect me. And besides, I had made a vow and I did not want to have to return the purity ring to my mother.

When I started dating someone seriously for the very first time (before that I had two “relationships” that lasted all of about five days with guys that I was only in to because they were nice to me and guys generally never paid me any attention), I’d never kissed anyone let alone had sex.

I had a better handle on how sex was supposed to work by this point but my knowledge was entirely theoretical. I told her early on that I didn’t want to have sex until I was married. It became a source of tension in our relationship; she was willing to wait, but it was difficult for her. She didn’t have the same baggage as I did around sex. And it was also complicated because she wasn’t ready to get into a serious relationship (having just broken up with someone) and to me everything seemed very serious.

Not only was I dating someone for the first time, but she was a woman which compounded everything further. I was closeted at home and work and the inauthenticity I felt during this time made me so stressed out that I ended up in the hospital because I couldn’t keep food down.

Everything freaked me out and seemed huge. If we held hands it was all I could think about. It seemed like everything was moving both too fast and too slow. And things were happening all out of order. We kissed before we were “officially” dating which felt wrong to me somehow. But I really liked her and I wanted to be close to her (and I really liked kissing her).

I understood, for the first time, what people were talking about when they talked about wanting to be with someone. But I had all of this stuff in my head that said that what I was doing was wrong. I was going too far. I was going too fast, and once you went too far and too fast there was no going back. You were ruined. That sounds harsh, but that’s the kind of emotional baggage that is put onto any kind of physical interaction and it made it impossible to view the relationship with any kind of perspective.

As things progressed I felt like as long as we didn’t have sex I was somehow preserving my purity. She and I started talking about marriage early. Way earlier than was right to do so. We were in love, but I was still closeted and she was still recovering from a break up. It was my first relationship. But marriage was on the table almost from the very beginning.

As we got more and more serious we started thinking about moving in together, but I was determined that I wouldn’t move in with her until we were married. That was the way it was supposed to be. So if we were going to move in together when her lease was up that meant we needed to get married before then. She was rightfully concerned, but to me it seemed like the best course of action.

After I was outed by her bumper sticker I remember my mom saying something to me that insinuated that she thought my girlfriend and I were having sex. I was furious. How dare she think so little of me that she would think I wasn’t keeping my promise? And then I thought, why am I keeping this promise if my own mother doesn’t even think I’m keeping it? Who am I keeping it for?

When I proposed to my girlfriend and she accepted we had sex. It seemed close enough to marriage at that point; we had plans to get married, we wanted to be closer, it felt right. But right from the beginning sex was complicated.

I was inexperienced and had no idea what I was supposed to be doing. There was tension and impatience on both our parts. It was complicated and I felt like I couldn’t talk about it. I was so ashamed to not be better at sex.

And of course, who was I going to talk to about it?

Most of my friends weren’t speaking to me since I came out. I had no other queer friends to talk to. I did what I always do and read a lot of books, but that only takes you so far.

I felt a deep sense of shame. Why wasn’t I better? I had been promised that if I waited to have sex God would bless me (and my sex life) and it would be awesome. But it wasn’t awesome. Did anyone else have these experiences? None of my friends who had gotten married talked about stuff like this. What was wrong with me?

We got married after we had been together for less than a year. I gave her my purity ring.

Sex stayed complicated. 

It seemed like we could never get on the same page. And then I finally found the language to talk about my gender identity and that complicated things even further. What did my male identity mean to her, a lesbian woman? As I transitioned medically she felt her queerness disappearing. And as I tried to figure out what it meant to me to be a man I overcompensated on masculinity in order to feel whole.

My changing body pushed us farther and farther apart. She didn’t like my facial stubble and I didn’t want to always have to shave. I want to be very careful here: the complications we faced were no one’s fault, but I internalized her disinterest in me sexually as something that was wrong with me. I saw my changing body as shameful just as I was starting to feel connected with it.

Throughout all of this, I had no one to talk to. Sex still seemed like something mythical and private, and yes, still a little shameful, although now my shame was about being terrible at sex and being unattractive. But that isolation made it so that I couldn’t get any perspective on what was happening. I was still convinced that everyone else in the world was having fantastic sex all the time and that I was the only one who couldn’t figure out how to get it together.

Everything seemed like it was my fault.

If she was having a bad night and wasn’t interested, my fault. If one of us couldn’t orgasm, my fault. If it took too long or went too fast, my fault. All of this shame just locked me up and kept me from being able to get untangled.

She and I divorced after being married for three years for a lot of different reasons, but sex was definitely one of the reasons (even if neither of us was willing to say it out loud). Even now it feels scandalous to say these things. It seems like I am being too personal. It seems that by saying that we had trouble with sex that I am somehow disparaging her or our relationship. It still feels strange to be speaking honestly about sex.

It still feels like people will read this and say that all of this is because I’m queer and that I deserve what I get. The weight of that shame still hangs heavy on me, even after all of these years.

That’s what the teaching I received about sex did to me. This is how it plays out in real lives and real relationships. &

Like what you read?

This article was originally published in the SEX (BODIES) issue of Spit & Spirit. If you liked what you read and want more, learn more about the issue and pickup a copy.